From the Harvard Crimson in 1887: Recently the following challenge was sent to the Yale News by the Harvard Cricket Association:-

“Gentlemen: We wish, in the name of the Harvard University Cricket Association, to challenge, through your paper, Yale University to play a match game of cricket next spring, the date and place to be arranged here-after. The challenge will remain open until Feb. 1, 1888. Hoping that we shall soon have a favorable answer, we are yours very truly,

JAMES B. MARKOE, President.

T. WILLING BALCH, Treasurer.

REYNOLDS D. BROWN, Secretary.”

The Harvard Crimson went on to say, “There is no regular cricket eleven at Yale, but there must be many men who have played the game either at St. Paul’s School or elsewhere before going to college.”

In connection with the above challenge, the New York Times said editorially:-

“The challenge of Harvard to Yale to meet her in a match at cricket would have more chance of acceptance were not this sport one of the few in which the New Haven institution as yet makes no pretensions to expertness.

The great cricketing college is the University of Pennsylvania, which is very easily first in it. The laurels of base-ball, foot-ball, boating, tennis, or field and track athletics may pass from one institution to another during successive years, but no American college meets Pennsylvania on the wicket with much prospect of coming off victor.

Haverford, Columbia and Harvard, however, often put fine elevens in the field, and it would probably give a great impulse to one of the most beneficial and least objectionable of college pastimes if Yale should now accept the Harvard challenge, pick out a team of cricketers, and with the opening of spring begin field practice in earnest.“

Though there were other challenges our Research Dept (aka Google) has found no record of Yale fielding a cricket team,against Harvard or other universities, nor did cricket historian David Sentance.

At the end of 2008 when Lloyd Jodah was beginning American College Cricket, Yale was one of the first colleges he was in contact with, a student named Varun Parundare, in attempting to start cricket clubs for the first American College Cricket Spring Break Championship.

It was Parundare who gave Jodah the link showing the Spring Break dates for US colleges. The promotional posters (scrapped) for the first American College Cricket Spring Break Championship listed Yale as one of the teams.

Ultimately Yale did not field a team, and University of Pennsylvania once again led the way to become the first Ivy League school to join American College Cricket, in 2010. However within the last month, Harvard, Cornell and Princeton have joined the national organisation, and played in the American College Cricket North East regional. Harvard defeated Princeton in their first meeting, on Oct 6.

This semester the Yale club managed to pull together a team to take on their historic rivals Harvard, in a “friendly” cricket match as reported excellently here in the Yale Daily News:

So 150 years after an official cricket club was first started at Harvard (1862), and 124 years after the challenge was issued, Harvard and Yale finally met in a cricket match !

Penn Cricket field in the 1800′s

]]>http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/18/124-years-laterchallenge-accepted-harvard-vs-yale/feed/0Final four for North East Championship !http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/08/final-four-for-north-east-championship/
http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/08/final-four-for-north-east-championship/#commentsMon, 08 Oct 2012 04:20:27 +0000ljodahhttp://americancollegecricket.com/?p=10269

Harvard Cricket Club, originally founded 1862,restarted 2011, now in American College Cricket North East Championship final 4

Five new college teams put on their American College Cricket uniforms to establish a foundation for cricket in their schools. Passion and love for the game brought them from as far as Massachusetts and upstate NY, as well as nearby NJ.

A total of 10 teams battled on 4 fields in Queens and Brooklyn for the Deryck Jodah Trophy in the American College Cricket North East Championship. The weather was gorgeous despite the forecast of rain and the players made the most of it.

Because of hitches with the CricHQ scoring app we are not able to bring you scorecards now,and other stats, however the app is a great option for scoring (as we found in the March National Championship) & we’ll continue using it in future tournaments.

Harvard won vs Princeton University

York College won vs Cornell University

Boston University won vs LIU-Brooklyn

New Jersey Institute of Technology won vs Cornell

Rutgers won vs NYU-Polytechnic

Boston University won vs Northeastern

Harvard won vs LIU-Brooklyn

NYU-Polytechnic won vs NJ Institute of Technology

Rutgers won vs Northeastern

York College vs Princeton

NJIT and NYU-Polytechnic finished with a 1-1 record.

National Champions York College, Boston University,Harvard and Rutgers were undefeated and qualifed for the final four to be filmed by TV Asia. The date for the Semis & Finals will be confirmed, but is set for the weekend of Oct 27 & 28.

Harvard Cricket Club’s performance is particularly noteworthy as its one of the colleges that cricket was played at in the late 1700s and early 1800s. It established an official club in 1862 and played until the 1920s. Motivated by American College Cricket Ibrahim Khan restarted the club in 2011, and now its set to play on TV challenging for the Deryck Jodah Trophy !

Boston University is one of the 5 colleges that took part in the first American College Cricket Spring Break Championship (the Nationals) in 2009 whilst Rutgers won the first North East regional in 2010.

2012 National Champions York College also reached the 2010 Nationals Finals,after being started just a month before by Suleman Mohammed and Lloyd Jodah.

Photos:

1 – Harvard Cricket team

2 – LIU – Brooklyn Blackbirds with Lloyd Jodah, American College Cricket President

]]>http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/10/08/final-four-for-north-east-championship/feed/0Cornell is 4th Ivy League school in American College Cricket !http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/08/29/cornell-is-4th-ivy-league-school-in-american-college-cricket/
http://americancollegecricket.com/2012/08/29/cornell-is-4th-ivy-league-school-in-american-college-cricket/#commentsWed, 29 Aug 2012 14:41:09 +0000ljodahhttp://americancollegecricket.com/?p=10050

The Ivy League played a huge role in the development of sports in America & won many early collegiate titles. With the Ivies’ rules against the granting of athletic scholarships however, other colleges have come to dominate college sports. With cricket the Ivy League schools have the opportunity even the score, as when UPenn reached the final four in the Nationals in 2011.

There are intense sports’ rivalries among the Ivies, and the earliest were in cricket and rowing. Now Cornell University has become the 4th Ivy League school to be a part of American College Cricket, following University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Princeton.

On April 22, 1903 some graduate students at Cornell University met in Barnes Hall and, after considerable discussion & meetings, decided to form the Cornell Cricket Club. In the 1800s cricket was active at the University of Pennsylvania, Haverford College, Harvard University, Princeton University and clubs like Merion, Philadelphia, Germantown in PA, St George’s in NYC and Longwood in MA. However Cornell Cricket had sporadic activity and by 1911 went the way of cricket itself in America – it practically disappeared.

Documented attempts were made to revive cricket at Cornell in 2003, and 2008. In 2008 the focus was put on tape-ball, and over the next couple of years Cornell played against neighboring universities like Colgate & Syracuse.

In founding American College Cricket, President Lloyd Jodah was in contact with a Cornell student Krithart Jain in an attempt to get Cornell to play the first American College Cricket Spring Break Championship in 2009, but the effort floundered. Kritarth graduated with a degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering in 2011.

Other students also showed some interest but it was not until 2012, under the leadership of Salil Nanda (now an alum) that Cornell University finally became a part of American College Cricket. Salil, a fast bowling an all rounder, graduated with a Masters in Biomedical Engineering but has remained part of the club. An example of the alumni involvement by American College Cricket rearing results.

With colleagues Aritro Roy,Aadhar Jain,Taimoor Akhtar,Surya Saha, Madhur Srivastava,and Sekhar Moganty the Cornell Cricket Club was reorganized, and given focus. Hard ball matches followed, and Cornell has won games against Syracuse University and Rochester Cricket Club.

The school colors are ”brick red” (called carnelian) and white, and the sports name is “Big Red”.The fight song is “Give my regards to Davy” and a bear is used as the unofficial mascot.

Cornell is usually ranked in the Top 20 of the world’s universities and accordingly has a tremendous record of achievement in many fields. For example it was at the Cornell Aeronautical Lab that the Automotive Crash Injury Research Project was begun in 1952, pioneering crash-testing. With the recent landing of “Curiosity” Rover on Mars, its worth noting that Cornell has been involved in NASA’s missions to Mars since 1962.